Israel's 'Three Percent' Prime Minister

Attila the Hun is more popular than Ehud Olmert.

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Jack Engelhard, 28/03/07 01:42

Jack Engelhard

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Jack Engelhard

Jack Engelhard’s classic international bestselling novel Indecent Proposal, which later became a worldwide hit movie, has been republished to meet readers’ demands. His other major works include Compulsive: A Novel, his award-winning post-Holocaust Montreal memoir Escape from Mount Moriah, plus Slot Attendant: A Novel About A Novelist. His website: www.jackengelhard.com

The latest opinion polls have Ehud Olmert at three percent -- and those three are probably his wife and children, which leaves him at zero. But let's give him the benefit of the doubt and give him his three percent, which still means that 97 percent want him out of there, like yesterday.

Attila the Hun is more popular than Ehud Olmert. Three percent won't win any Academy Awards, but it's somehow good enough to lead the Children of Israel.

What damage can a man do when practically everyone in Israel wants him gone, and quick? Plenty.

He can, and he did, offer to negotiate everything: Judea, Samaria, the Golan and even What damage can a man do when practically everyone in Israel wants him gone?Jerusalem. Call it the Saudi Plan, or the Quartet Plan, or the Condi Plan, whatever; the Plan is all about putting an end to Israel. The Condi Plan is the latest move. Condi Rice is part of a US Administration that tops the scales at 30 percent.

Get the trend? People who have no business being in power run the world.

Did I say "like yesterday"? That would be Ehud Barak, who, at 10 percent, was willing to hand over most of Israel to Yasser Arafat.

Arafat, meanwhile, is still the most popular person in the world, even in death. The United Nation's new Secretary General visited his grave just the other day. And back there, when he died, the BBC's Barbara Plett wept for the loss of a man who was so good at killing Jews. Killing Jews is really the way to go if a man wants to be loved and get those high popularity ratings (including a Nobel Prize for "Peace").

Right now, everybody's talking about the Auschwitz... I mean, the Saudi Plan. Ehud (Three Percent) Olmert suddenly favors this new trick, or rather, old trick. The men who run Saudi Arabia are always favored by 100 percent of the Saudi population. That's because to vote "no" can be hazardous to your health and, therefore, nobody votes.

That's almost like Israel, where people vote - yes, they do - but the leadership does whatever the heck it wants to do anyway. Who cares what the people want? Ariel Sharon proved this. His ministers kept turning him down for the evacuation of Jewish Israelis from Gaza, but he went ahead regardless.

Which, truly is a page from how things are done, still, in Russia. There is no way to Who cares what the people want?properly measure Vladimir Putin's popularity among Russians. For all we know he may be at three percent himself. But people who disagree with Putin seem to suffer and die from accidental food poisoning.

Putin's Russia is part of the Quartet that is prepared to decree life or death for Israel. Ditto the United Nations; also part of the Quartet. Of the 191 member states at the UN, more than half are run by dictators who get free parking in New York, but who would get booted out of office back home if elections were allowed. Therefore, no elections are allowed. Really, sometimes life is so simple.

If you're a leader who has no support of the people, well, so what? Go ahead and do whatever makes you happy. Pay no attention to the people or to the safety of the land. To leaders who lead only themselves and not the people, while the people suffer the consequences, it all gets pretty close to life on a movie set, where the multitudes, yes, the "people," are nothing more than "extras." These extras do as they are told. They have no say.

At the moment, this is Israel in a nutshell, certainly in the view of Ehud Olmert, who learned (from Ariel Sharon) to regard Jewish Israelis as nothing more than background noise. It remains to be seen if true Israelis ever decide to take, or rather take back, the stage and scream until they are heard. After all, three percent should not be that difficult to overcome. "Stiff-necked" would sound pretty good around this time.

The question remains and must be put directly to the 97 percent: WHERE ARE YOU?

Part 12 of The Bathsheba Deadline, Jack Engelhard's latest novel, is now available. This installment of the serialized novel, the first published by Amazon.com, may well be its grand finale. Click here to find out! Haven't started reading it yet? Click the link and scroll down - all previous installments are there and ready to be downloaded.